New Delhi: The Union cabinet has approved 'Mission Mausam' to improve accuracy in forecasts and nowcasts. The mission will have an outlay of ₹2,000 crore over the next two years.
The mission will be implemented by the India Meteorological Department, Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology and the National Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting. It will focus on accuracy, modelling, radars, satellites, and accurate agromet forecasts. IT Minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw who briefed about the decisions said the aim is to have accurate weather advisory and nowcast technology in the next 5-6 years.
In recent years there have been some concerns with forecasting single-day rain events because often the event is far more extreme than the forecast or far milder than what is expected.
HT reported on July 8 that on the night of June 27, a cloud cluster formed over Delhi with the monsoon still approaching the city and multiple weather systems at play in different parts of the country. Yet, weather models could not appropriately predict the unprecedented amount of rain that would lash the city in the next few hours. Around 1.30 am on June 28, the India Meteorological Department issued a nowcast warning that said intense rain was approaching the city in the next few hours. Hours later, the city woke up to the highest rain it had recorded in a day since 1936.
"At a national level, our forecast accuracy for daily rainfall is 80% for the past 5 years and 60% for 5 days lead time forecast. But in July, overall, we had 88% forecast accuracy for daily rainfall mainly due to an improved decision support system compared to last year. We are incorporating much more data to arrive at our forecasts," M Mohapatra, director general, IMD had said last month.
{{/usCountry}}"At a national level, our forecast accuracy for daily rainfall is 80% for the past 5 years and 60% for 5 days lead time forecast. But in July, overall, we had 88% forecast accuracy for daily rainfall mainly due to an improved decision support system compared to last year. We are incorporating much more data to arrive at our forecasts," M Mohapatra, director general, IMD had said last month.
{{/usCountry}}"A multi-model ensemble is being used, interpretation has improved due to better capacity and methodologies used. There is an effort to improve and enhance observational systems including radars, automatic weather stations etc to improve the quality of data being fed into the models. That is why we are seeing an improvement of 10 to 15% in forecast accuracy in many places. We have shared our plan with the ministry of earth sciences. For extreme heat, on day 1 our accuracy is 91% but it reduces to 83% on day 2," he added.